Little Dip by Gill McKnight: Book Review

Little Dip by Gill McKnight is everything I wanted from it and then some. This tells you something because I had high expectations for this book after consuming the other four like they were oxygen.

In this one, we get to explore how Marie, the matriarch from the previous four, ended up with the love of her life, Connie Fortune, and we get to see the main characters from the other books as kids (a total bonus).

Set in 1977, Connie Fortune is in search of a rare bird. Sightings of it have been reported in the Little Dip valley so she sets off in her old camper, Wilma.

When she arrives at Lost Creek, the small town bordering Little Dip, she stops to stock up with supplies and ask the locals if they can direct her. The locals warn her off the place with creepy stories which Connie promptly ignores as folklore.

As luck would have it she is at Johnston’s General Store when Sylvie Garoul, matriarch of the Garoul family, arrives. The Garoul family own the valley that she would like to enter and so she asks Sylvie for permission. Sylvie refuses but Marie doesn’t take no for an answer. Instead, she sneaks into the valley.

She doesn’t find the bird but she does find an array of other interesting wildlife to photograph. When she hears what sounds like screams coming from the river she rushes towards the sound. A child on a raft seems to be in distress and she dives into the river in a rescue attempt only to find that a hoard of other children and an adult are playing a game.

The adult, Marie Garoul, turns out to be Sylvie’s daughter and ends up rescuing Connie from the river and carrying her back to Sylvie’s home where she is fed and put up for the night.

Connie may not have found her bird but she did find an attractive brunette, a number of misadventures and a family that are not entirely who they seem to be. Could the locals be right about the valley and why is Marie so determined to stop her from venturing out by herself?

Over the course of a year Connie will uncover the truth and forever find her views of the world changed. But is she openminded enough to fall in love with a werewolf?

The Characters

McKnight writes fun characters. You can’t help but fall in love with the Garoul family as you get to know them through the series. This book was no exception. I was neutral about Connie and Marie before but this book has endeared them to me in a way that showcases McKnight’s skill as an author.

The Writing Style

If you have read the series already then you will know some of the major plot points of this book. And yet it was done with such a deft hand that I felt like it was a brand new story.

The Pros

The writing is superb. The characters are endearing and to see the kids as kids is wonderful.

The dialogue is snappy with lines like this – “Charm, entice, enchant, whatever skillset you have that is the opposite of your usual one.”

The Cons

My heart sank when I saw the cover. I knew the book was coming and I was excited about it and then the white cover with red trees and a ghost face was revealed. Sigh. I am not mad about the covers for the rest of the series but this also just doesn’t seem right for the story.

The Conclusion

I didn’t even know I wanted this book and now I am so glad I have it.

Get the book. Absolutely get the book and read it. Especially if you have read and enjoyed the others in the series.

And if you haven’t read them yet then start with this book and then work your way through the series. It holds up with the rest of the series even though it was written so far apart.

This is my favourite shifter series by far and I highly recommend you get all the books.

Excerpt from Little Dip by Gill McKnight

The first howl woke her to a pitch-black world. She scrabbled for her watch to check the time. The three fluorescent hands dimly outlined four-thirty. Connie lay still and strained to listen. Had she really heard wolves? Sure, she was in the forest, but the howling had sounded close. Very close. Close enough to awaken her with heart palpitations.

She scrambled to her knees and moved the checkered curtains to peek outside. The intense darkness didn’t allow her to see beyond the end of her nose. Another howl sounded even closer and kept her glued to the window. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the dark–enough for her to make out the patterns in the black on black. Tree limbs shivered over the hunched, mutated shadows of shrubs and underbrush. The wind hissed through the fir needles and rattled through eddied of crisp, dying leaves. And slowly, slowly, she thought she deciphered the slide of something through the trees. An oily slick of moonlight threaded through fur. Or had that been her imagination?

She discovered lesbian fiction when she was 19. Radclyffe and Karin Kallmaker soon became favourite authors and she spent a large part of her hard earned income on shipping books from Amazon.com to her home in South Africa.

Over the years she became frustrated with purchasing mediocre lesbian fiction feeling like it was a waste of her money and time. And so she decided to share only the best books and movies with lesbians who are looking for only the best. And so, The Lesbian Review was born